Rain

There’s a quiet, beautiful sadness in SCE Japan’s Rain, a downloadable game for PlayStation 3 starring two children being chased by monsters in a wet and lonely world.

It begins with a sick, feverish boy looking out his window into a rainy street, where he sees the form of a girl, almost invisible. Only the rain, pattering gently upon her skin, reveals her outline.

Following closely behind her is a towering, menacing creature. Also transparent, it is seen only via the water droplets bouncing off its body. The boy watches as the monster chases her away.

Unable to leave the girl to the thing’s clutches, the boy quits his home and gives chase, following her and the unknown beast into the street and through a dark doorway. Upon passing under its arch he, too, becomes invisible.

This sets the stage for a short but generally engaging romp through the rain-slick, night-blanketed streets of a quaint European village, and leads to some interesting twists on traditional stealth and platforming play.

However, clever as all this may seem, Rain struggles for and ultimately never quite manages to achieve the kind of poetic substance found in other games of its ilk.

Moving around on the street our little hero is more or less visible, his glistening profile revealed by the constant rain trickling down his body.

But aside from his invisibility, he’s just a boy. No super powers or weapons. That means when you come up against monsters – all of which are also invisible – your goal is generally to find a roof to shelter the boy from the falling water, thus rendering him fully transparent and pretty much unfindable.

It’s a smart little mechanic, and the designers develop it in logical and satisfying ways that most players will instantly intuit.

For example, run through a muddy area and the boy’s legs will become brown with muck, making him an easy target until he runs through a deep puddle to clean himself off.

But these deeper pools of water can make splashing sounds that will attract nearby enemies, so you need to employ caution when using them to get clean.

On the flip side, you can also use puddles to your advantage, monitoring the movements of less wily enemies as they carelessly splash through the water.

But nifty as it may be at times, this novel play concept isn’t without fault.

I often found keeping track of the boy while he was out of the rain to be a bit frustrating. You can see his footprints, but they’re tiny and of little use in determining his precise location between strides. This makes jumping over gaps tricky.

And since there are no footprints to be seen while, say, scrabbling up boxes, I just had to imagine his progress hauling himself up until his little feet finally appeared atop the boxes.

It’s far from a deal breaking issue, but it’s annoying enough to be noticed. Repeatedly.

The moral here, I think, is that even though a game may require a player’s character to be invisible to his enemies it doesn’t mean he ought to be hard for the player to see, too. Better visual indications as to the boy’s precise whereabouts would have gone a long way toward ironing out problems navigating Rain‘s world.

The invisibility mechanic may be the most striking thing about Rain, but this is a game that belongs to a category of interactive entertainment that has (or at least wants to have) more on its mind than just action.

Consider its score, which adapts Claude Debussy’s beautiful “Claire de Lune.” It alternates between delicately plucked piano notes and a rolling majesty that always seems to pull back and fall away just when it’s about to reach its crescendo. This music is a fine match for the abandoned streets, empty circus pavilions, and old factory buildings through which our young hero journeys. Much like the score, these locations occasionally reveal small, flickering lights portentous of a happy resolution that remains elusive.

But this elaborately conceived presentation is sabotaged slightly by a wishy-washy story more interested in conveying vague feelings than communicating any concrete ideas or emotions.

Rain clearly wants to say something with its narrative text – sentences set in storybook typeface that literally hover in the air as the boy runs by – but it doesn’t seem to quite know how to do it. It strives for metaphors that never quite materialize — save for the obvious one linking its rainy, lonely world to the pair’s feelings of sadness and isolation when they’re apart — and only gently explores the seemingly deep link between the boy and the girl.

The best I could tell by the time the credits began to roll is that the story is about friendship, courage, and determination acting our best weapons to fight back the ever-encroaching darkness of our lives.

But really, isn’t that what just about every story is about?

The writers needed to hone in on something more specific, more tangible. Even defining the characters a little more so we had some idea who they were outside of this strange world would have provided something more for us to grasp.

As is, the ideas communicated in Rain are as hard to make out as its invisible protagonist.

I’ve been pretty hard on Rain, and I didn’t start writing this review with that intention.

It is in most ways a lovely game, with many parts deftly crafted.

And it has an artistic ambition that echoes its obvious inspirations, the most prominent of which are Limbo, Ico, and The Unfinished Swan. If you enjoyed any of those games you’ll probably find quite a bit to like about SCE Japan Studio’s creation, especially in its clever play and compelling audio and visual presentation.

But that’s also part of the problem: It’s merely reminiscent of greater works. It doesn’t have a voice of its own. Its hesitant, wavering tale of a boy and girl struggling together to dispel the dark doesn’t carry the weight of other poetic adventures. Like a frivolous pop ballad filled with vague notions of love and heartbreak, Rain left me in want of clarity, resolution, and a more distinct message.

It’s great that this amazing medium has grown to the point where we expect meaningful ideas to emerge from its more artistic works.

But designers who want to use games to express themselves need to have something interesting to say.